US Fintech Plaid Hires Bookings.com’s Executive To Lead European Expansion

Ripsy Bandourian, Plaid’s first Head of Europe

Fintech company Plaid is looking to expand its business in Europe and has hired Ripsy Bandourian to lead its operations on the continent. Ripsy Bandourian who joined Bookings.com in 2014 joined Plaid last week as the company’s first Head of Europe operations.

Plaid is a fintech that connects other fintech companies to the bank accounts of their customers using its technology, enabling these companies to be able to tap into financial data securely. Plaid can also be called an open banking fintech. Open banking is a banking practice that provides third-party financial service providers open access to consumer banking, transaction, and other financial data from banks and non-bank financial institutions through the use of application programming interfaces (APIs), according to Investopedia.

Her major duty is to lead Plaid expansion in the continent of Europe, leaving Keith Grose – the company’s former Head of International – to focus on the company’s UK business. At Booking.com, Ripsy Bandourian worked for more than eight years across different roles while focusing on product and marketing. Her last role at the company was the position of Vice President of Global Accomodation Partnerships and her responsibility included overseeing the company’s relationship with its hotel partners.

Now with Plaid, she is sure to bring her vast knowledge and rich experience to help the fintech achieve its goal of becoming a big thing in Europe. Apart from working at Booking.com, she once worked at Goldman Sachs as a quantitative analyst and at Apple’s European division.

Explaining her reasons for joining Plaid, the new Head of Europe said that “I’ve lived my life on three different continents. And there is absolutely no way for me to take my financial history with me. There are no tools, there are no ways to make it easier. And this is a use case,” she said emphasizing that her reasons were personal just as much as they were professional.

Plaid which is currently available in seven European countries including Germany, France and the UK, has been hammering on its expansion plans and is looking to go about it as fast as it can, hence the appointment of Ripsy Bandourian to lead its operations on the continent. “The plans are quite aggressive. The investment that Plaid is making in Europe speaks to the opportunity that the company sees itself, and how deeply and how fast we’re evolving,” the new Egyptian head said.